You have written the brief and it reads well. "Premium but approachable." "Clean, with personality." "Bold, modern, fresh." Every designer has a collection of these, and none of them is a description. Each one is a decision that has not been made yet, handed to the person least able to make it for you. That is not a failing on your side. Nobody teaches this, and the words feel like they mean something because they mean something to you. The trouble is that they mean something different to the person reading them, and the gap between the two meanings is the first round of revisions.
Here is how to find those words in your own brief and turn each one into a choice your designer can act on. It takes about ten minutes, and it is the ten minutes most likely to save you a week.
Find the adjective
Read the brief and circle every word that describes how the work should feel rather than what it should do or contain. Bold, modern, fresh, premium, human, authentic, dynamic, clean, playful, timeless. These are the words that generate the first round, because each one lands differently on the person who wrote it and the person who reads it. "Bold" to a marketing manager who has lived with a timid brand for five years is "restrained" to a designer who spent last week on a festival poster.
“We want something premium, modern and human.”
“Considered rather than energetic. Understated rather than bold. Warm rather than cool.”
Three lines, three decisions. The designer knows where to stand.
Ask what it would have to be instead
Every useful adjective is one end of a scale, and the other end is the information. Premium as opposed to what: everyday, mass-market, cheap? Modern as opposed to traditional, classic, heritage? Once the scale is named, the word stops being a compliment the work should earn and becomes a position the work should occupy. Positions can be briefed. Compliments cannot.
Here are the ten we see most, with the scale each one is hiding.
- Premium: everyday to luxury
- Modern: heritage to contemporary
- Bold: understated to loud
- Clean: dense to sparse
- Playful: serious to playful
- Warm: warm to cool
- Human: corporate to personal
- Dynamic: still to energetic
- Timeless: of the moment to classic
- Fresh: familiar to unexpected
“It should feel clean.”
“Sparse rather than dense. Lots of space, few elements, one thing per screen.”
Clean was hiding a scale from dense to sparse. Now it is a position.
Show two references that disagree
The fastest way to find out what you mean is to look at two pieces of work you both admire that sit at different points on the scale, and notice which one you reach for. People are unreliable at describing taste and reliable at recognising it. Five things you like and two you would not want, each with one reason, will do more than any paragraph. Where the picks contradict each other, that is the decision surfacing, and it is better surfaced now than in a presentation.
The reason matters more than the reference. "Like this" tells your designer nothing they can reuse. "Like this, for the pace" or "like this, for how little is on the page" tells them which quality to carry over and which to leave behind.
“See attached moodboard for the vibe.”
“Like the Hay spring film for its pace. Like the Aesop site for how little is on the page. Not like our competitor’s launch, which is too loud for us.”
Pick one
This is the step people skip because it feels like choosing a favourite child. It is the step that saves the first round. A brief that says "premium but approachable" has declined to choose between two things that pull against each other, and someone will choose. If you choose, it is a decision. If your designer chooses, it is a guess you will pay to correct.
If the honest answer is in the middle, say "in the middle" and mean it. That is a position too, and a designer can work to it. What cannot be briefed is both ends at once.
Write the choice, not the adjective
"Considered rather than energetic. Understated rather than bold. Warm rather than cool." Three short lines, three decisions, and a designer knows where to stand. Compare that with "premium, modern, human", which is three compliments and no information, and which costs a round of work to translate.
The form matters. "Rather than" does the work, because it names the thing you are not asking for. A brief that says "warm" leaves cool on the table. A brief that says "warm rather than cool" has closed a door, which is the most useful thing a brief can do.
“Bold but not over the top, modern but timeless.”
“Bold rather than understated. Of the moment rather than classic. If the two conflict, bold wins.”
The last sentence is the tiebreak. It is the line designers most wish they had.
When you do not know
Sometimes you do not know where on the scale you want to be, and the brief is the wrong place to pretend. Say so, in these words: "Not decided between understated and bold. Show us one of each." That is a brief for a first presentation with two directions, which is a real job with a real price, and your designer will be glad to have it named. What costs money is not the open decision. It is the open decision disguised as an adjective.
What it costs
A revision round on a small motion job is a day or two. On a packaging range with a print deadline it can be a missed slot. On a website it is the week the copy was supposed to arrive. Each undecided adjective in the brief is, roughly, one of those. The arithmetic is not subtle. It is only ever done after the fact, when it is expensive, instead of at the briefing stage, where it is free.
When you brief with HereBriefly, tone is asked as three sliders, each with a scale at both ends, and the document writes the positions in the "rather than" form for you. There is no box for adjectives, on purpose.
Nicolai Højfeldt founded HereBriefly and writes these guides. Everything in them comes from briefs that went wrong on one side of the table or the other, and from the ones that went right.
